The old phrase “don’t cry over spilled milk” resonates deeply with Windy Hill Elementary School Teacher of the Year and semifinalist Chris Bacca.

From the moment he meets the children in his classroom, Bacca begins a loving discernment of his students’ “buttons” — the comments that make them smile, the situations that set them off. As the year progresses, Bacca helps each student in his classroom recognize their peers’ strengths and weaknesses. He teaches them how to spur each other on as a family and how to encourage, or diffuse.

An opportunity to diffuse came in the form of spilled milk last month. And Bacca is relishing every drop of it.

How do love, appreciation and respect help them academically? How does that change your classroom experience for the better?

You cannot have an academically rigorous classroom until your children trust you and they know you love, appreciate and respect them. Every child craves love. And not every child gets the love they deserve at home. And so whose job is it to provide that love for them? I think it’s mine. I know that it’s mine.

You help your kids find their super power. How do you do that? Where do you start?

I need to know the child’s personality. What makes them angry? What pushes their buttons? What excites them? Not just to learn, but what lights their face up in life? I think that’s the piece we miss sometimes. The children become these bar graphs in a notebook and we don’t stop to notice that something I just said to them completely changed the way their face looked. That’s where you start. Then you start weaning the responsibility off you and onto their classmates. So we all know what makes this child happy and what makes this child angry.

For example, I have a little boy and he struggles — struggles — with his temper. It’s been a process to let him know, “I’m going to love you through this. You can throw that desk, and I’m going to keep loving you. You can throw that book and I’m going to keep loving you. And I’m going to expect better from you. And I’m going to expect more tomorrow.”

And today he had a moment in the cafeteria. He was doing so well. But he spilled his milk and it got on his clothes. It just set him off — he’d been holding it in and this spilled milk was just too much for him. And immediately, my two tables jumped up to him. They started cleaning up the milk that was on the table, started wiping off his shoes and began to wipe off his clothes and rub his back and tell him it was going to be OK. They knew that spilled milk — as simple as it was to us — could make or break his day. And my children chose to not let it break his day. And that’s incredible.

Is there anything you want the community to hear?

I want people to know that Windy Hill is truly a model for what schools should be across this county. Windy Hill involves business partners and community leaders and we have 70 or more mentors who come in on a weekly basis to work with kids. I just challenge everyone to go out into their neighborhood and find the closest school. Walk into the front office and say, “How can I help?”

Teachable Moments, a project of The Community Foundation, highlights 26 Northeast Florida Teachers of the Year finalists. WJCT will air its teacher radio interview at 6:04 a.m. and 8:04 a.m. each Monday during “Morning Edition.” For the entire print interview, a video, a blog discussing teaching and a link to the WJCT teacher interview, visit Jacksonville.com/teachablemoments.